Knowledge Update

​New York, March 21 (IANS) In a bid to make easier for media firms to post live video broadcasts, micro-blogging website Twitter will launch Live video application programming interface (API) later this week.

​New Delhi, March 21 (IANS) With the nominal year-over-year (y-o-y) expenditure growth at 12 per cent and with consumption set to triple to $4 trillion, India will be the third largest consumer market by 2025, a report said on Tuesday.

New York, March 19 (IANS) Yahoo is reportedly in talks with Facebook about an advertising partnership that would allow the social networking site to sell ads on Tumblr.

According to a report in The Information website, Yahoo is considering a deal with Facebook that would allow the social network giant to sell ads inside Tumblr’s mobile app.

​New York, March 21 (IANS) In a battle against fake news, Facebook has started to roll out a new tool that fact-checks the stories a user shares.

According to a report in Telegraph on Monday, some users in the US saw a pop-up window appearing when they shared a story on their profile, reading "Disputed by multiple,

San Francisco, March 21 (IANS) Driven by a series of rumoured new products launch this week, Apple shares on Monday surged one per cent to hit an all-time high of $141.46.

According to media reports, Apple is expected to unveil the new iPad Pro lineup, a larger iPhone SE model with 128GB storage and new Apple Watch bands this week.

New Delhi, March 21 (IANS) Chinese smartphone maker Gionee on Tuesday launched a new selfie-focused smartphone in India that comes with a 16MP front camera with selfie flash and houses a 4,010mAh battery. While the pre-booking for A1 starts from March 3, the price of the device is yet to be announced. "Today's generation views the world from their front camera and they live for creating and celebrating experiences out of moments," said Arvind R Vohra, Country CEO and MD, Gionee India, in a statement. The device is powered by 2GHz octa-core P10 Helios processor paired with 4GB RAM, has 64GB internal memory that can be expanded up to 256GB and runs on Amigo 4.0 on top of Android 7.0 Nougat. A1 is equipped with a fingerprint sensor and claims to unlock the phone in just 0.2 seconds. For humid conditions, the sensor unlocks the device even with moist fingers. A1 has a full-metal body made out of "A6000 aircraft grade material" that is used in making premium cars and aircraft. The 4G and VOLTE enabled smartphone also offers a host of amazing features such as Split Screen, Maxx Audio and Virus detection among other key features.

​London, March 21 (IANS) London has become the cheapest of the worlds major global centres, with the cost of living falling behind that of New York, Paris and Tokyo to its lowest level for two decades, figures revealed on Tuesday.

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) world rankings, the fall is almost entirely due to the Brexit-inspired 15 per cent fall in the pound's fall since last June's referendum to leave the European Union (EU), the Guardian reported. 

The pound's fall has made prices in London much cheaper for foreign visitors, although not for local residents who earn their incomes in sterling.

The EIU said London is cheaper than New York for the first time in 15 years, and that relative prices in Manchester have fallen so far that the cost of living in the city is now on a par with Bangkok.

Meanwhile, the world's most expensive city is Singapore, where average prices are 20 per cent higher than in New York and one-third more than in London. The city-state has long been the most expensive place in the world to buy and run a car, but the EIU said it is also the second-priciest destination in which to buy clothes.

Australia and New Zealand are also pricing themselves out of the price bracket of budget-conscious travellers, the Guardian quoted the EIU as saying. 

Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland and Wellington all now feature in the world's top 20 most expensive cities and each of them are pricier than London.

Almaty in Kazakhstan ranked as the cheapest city in the world.

London's new-found bargain-basement status has encouraged a flood of international shoppers to the city. Even low-cost clothing store Primark has reported strong sales to foreign tourists, joining luxury brands such as Burberry in enjoying a boost in sales from visitors drawn by the cheap pound.

​Colombo, March 21 (IANS) Sri Lanka is looking to increase international air connectivity in an effort to boost tourism, a statement said here on Tuesday.

With the tourism industry recording a positive growth since 2009, officials said they now hope to have more direct flights, open skies policy, competitive landing and parking fees, incentivising low-cost airlines and smoother immigration and check-in procedures, Xinhua news agency reported.

Sri Lanka is also hoping, with public and private stakeholders, to create a "Colombo Calendar" of events which tourists can access across multiple channels.

"The main goal is to ensure Sri Lanka doubles its tourism sector earnings from the present $3.5 billion in 2016 to $7 billion by 2020," the Tourism Ministry statement said.

Last year, 2.05 million tourists arrived in Sri Lanka, taking the island's tourism earnings to a record of $346.98 million in July 2016.

India and China have been the leading markets with the most number of tourist arrivals.

Over 270,000 Chinese tourists arrived in Sri Lanka in 2016, with China recording the strongest growth of 26.4 per cent compared to the previous year.

This year, Sri Lanka has set a target of 2.5 million tourists. 

​Washington, March 21 (IANS) The last volcanic activity on the Red Planet ceased about 50 million years ago -- around the time when our planet's plant and animal species, including dinosaurs, went extinct, reveals new research.

The giant Martian shield volcano Arsia Mons produced one new lava flow at its summit every one to 3 million years during the final peak of activity. 

The last volcanic activity there ceased about 50 million years ago around the time of the Earth's Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction.

"We estimate that the peak activity for the volcanic field at the summit of Arsia Mons probably occurred approximately 150 million years ago -- the late Jurassic period on Earth -- and then died out around the same time as the Earth's dinosaurs," said Jacob Richardson, a post-doctoral researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. 

"It's possible, though, that the last volcanic vent or two might have been active in the past 50 million years, which is very recent in geological terms," Richardson added.

Located just south of Mars' equator, Arsia Mons is the southernmost member of a trio of broad, gently sloping shield volcanoes collectively known as Tharsis Montes. 

Richardson presented the findings, published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, on Monday. 

The high-resolution imaging was provided by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

A better understanding of when volcanic activity on Mars took place is important because it helps researchers understand the Red Planet's history and interior structure.

​New York, March 21 (IANS) Chimpanzees living in the wild -- with favourable ecological factors, abundant supply of high-energy and nutritious foods and low predation levels -- can have long life spans, a study has found.

"Our findings show how ecological factors, including variation in food supplies and predation levels, drive variation in life expectancy among wild chimpanzee populations," said lead author of the study Brian Wood, Assistant Professor at Yale University.

In the study, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, the team analysed a sample of 306 chimpanzees of a community, called Ngogo, at Kibale National Park in Uganda.

They found that these chimpanzees had an average life expectancy of about 33 years, nearly twice as high as that of other chimpanzee communities and within the 27 to 37-year range of life expectancy at birth of human hunter-gatherers.

According to the study, favourable ecological conditions largely account for the Ngogo community's high life expectancy -- the highest on record for any group of wild chimpanzees.

The forest in Ngogo provides a relatively consistent and abundant supply of high-energy and nutritious foods, including easily digestible figs.

This rich food supply helps buffer the Ngogo chimpanzees against periods of hunger, and helps fuel their ability to stave off diseases that would otherwise lead to higher mortality, the research said.

Further, the Ngogo chimpanzees also benefit from a low risk of predation, no major disease epidemics, either introduced by humans or due to other causes, like those that have affected wild chimpanzees at several other research sites.

The study is important for understanding the evolution of chimpanzees and hominin life histories as they help us to imagine the conditions that could have changed mortality rates among our early hominin populations, Wood said.

"It has long been proposed that there are extreme differences in the life expectancies of human hunter-gatherers and chimpanzees," said David Watts, Professor at Yale University.

"In fact, the Ngogo community's pattern of survivorship more closely resembles that of human hunter-gatherers than those documented for other chimpanzee communities," he said.